TV programming related to John F. Kennedy will be everywhere in the next few weeks as the 50th anniversary of the assassination moves ever closer. This Sunday through Tuesday, two programs offer the chance to sample opposite ends of the spectrum, from the low road to the high.

Killing Kennedy, airing Sunday night on the National Geographic Channel, is the quick-and-dirty, cheap-and-tawdry take, a two-hour docudrama that plays like a soap opera crossed with a mediocre Law & Order rerun.

JFK, the four-hour American Experience documentary that airs on PBS Monday and Tuesday, feels like a balm for assassination media overload. This epic accounting of a life and political career refuses to froth at the mouth or trod the predictable path.

Actually, Killing Kennedy gets pretty unpredictable as well, thanks to the cringe-inducing dialogue that congeals in a mass of poor taste. “I’m impotent,” Rob Lowe’s Kennedy laments in the midst of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Snicker. “I want you to be very careful around that Onassis character,” he tells a horribly miscast Ginnifer Goodwin as Jackie. Ooooh.

The movie puts Kennedy on a collision course with Will Rothhaar’s Lee Harvey Oswald, who gets to bask in the only clever conceit here: Oswald holds mock press conferences with himself, a symptom of the unhinged narcissism that ran in his family. Alas, Michelle Trachtenberg’s Marina falls for him anyway, though she hedges when he suggests they move from frozen Russia to sunny Texas. “English no good,” she protests. “And I have no clothes.” Could this mean beeg trouble for moose and squirrel?

Killing Kennedy, based on Bill O’Reilly’s best-seller, offers American tragedy as shoddy tabloid fodder. It never wanders toward extreme conspiracy; its missteps are more tonal and constant. In pretending to make its famous characters human, it ends up shrinking national trauma into the stuff of a quickie TV movie of the week.

In other words, its MO couldn’t differ more from American Experience. You can accuse the long-running PBS documentary series of being a little stodgy. You can mock its middlebrow consistency. But when it comes to exploring American subjects with intelligence and depth, no TV enterprise does it better.

The series rises to the occasion here with meticulous detail and narrative thrust, starting at the beginning, with Kennedy’s fierce childhood rivalry with his older brother Joe, and ending on the streets of Dallas. This is the nonsensationalized version of the JFK story. It has the good sense to realize that anyone who wants to see the Zapruder film, in its gazillion variations, can head over to YouTube and make a day of it.

On the other hand, if you want to spend time in the company of Robert Caro, Robert Dallek, Richard Reeves and other pre-eminent historians, and watch carefully selected documentary footage placed in historical context, you’ve come to the right place. This is no puff piece; Kennedy’s womanizing ways get full treatment, as do the failures of his first year in office and his waffling on civil rights. Like most people who achieve positions of great power, he was complicated.

JFK, which stands at the top rung of America Experience’s presidents series, embraces that complexity. It refuses our culture’s current compulsion to deify or demonize. It acknowledges the conundrum of assessing those who die famous and young: We have no idea how good or bad a president Kennedy might have become.

The film doesn’t waste time slipping and sliding on the grassy knoll. You’ll find out a lot more about the Cuban missile crisis and the White House’s segregation standoff with George Wallace than you will about Oswald and what he did or didn’t do. That’s the most refreshing tonic of all. Here’s a superb reason and opportunity to take stock of Kennedy’s life, presented at a time when everyone feels compelled to parse his death.

Follow Chris Vognar on Twitter at @chrisvognar.

Killing Kennedy

7 Sunday night, National Geographic Channel. 2 hrs.

American Experience: JFK

8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, PBS (Channel 13). 2 hrs. each night.

COMMEMORATING JFK

Now in hardback: JFK Assassination: The Reporters’ Notes

Based on first-person accounts from Dallas Morning News journalists, this gripping narrative chronicles President John F. Kennedy’s fatal visit to Dallas hour-by-hour. Shortly after the assassination, reporters, photographers and editors wrote down their experiences. This volume includes copies of the original typewritten notes, giving readers access to the first draft of history. jfk50.pictorialbook.com.

JFK Commemorative Box Set

This commemorative box set includes a reprint of the complete edition of The News from Nov. 23, 1963, 10 historic photographs, a transcript of President Kennedy’s “Unspoken Speech” and three collectible JFK50 cards. Available at dallasnews.com/JFK50.

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